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Abandoned mines › Idaho
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Bannock County, Idaho

Bannock County, Idaho has 255 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1937–1982, including 10 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 144 prospect pits; 5 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 19 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Bannock County, every OSMRE abandoned mine land problem in the county, and every MSHA-registered mine here with status Abandoned. Named features are listed below; unnamed ones are counted by type. Locations are deliberately not shown: this page says what abandoned workings are in the county, not where to find them. They are dangerous and should not be entered.

Mapped mine features (USGS)
255
Mine openings
10
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
19
5 features carry a name144 prospect pits23 quadrangle maps, published 1937–1982 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mine openings
    shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
    10 3.9%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    144 56.5%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    8 3.1%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    93 36.5%
Named features on the maps5 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Fort Hall Mine Adit
Fort Hall Mine Mine
Fort Hall Mine Prospect Pit
Leadville Mine Prospect Pit
Moonlight Mine Adit

A name is the label printed beside the symbol on the map. "First mapped" is the earliest topographic edition that shows the symbol, which bounds the feature's age from above; it is not the date it was worked. Unnamed features (most prospect pits, adits and shafts carry no label) are in the counts above but not this list.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned19 on register
  1. Baldwin Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hunziker Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1000325
    Abandoned
  2. Bengal Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hunziker Construction Company · MSHA ID 1001012
    Abandoned
  3. Chilton Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bannock County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1001390
    Abandoned
  4. Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bannock County Public Works · MSHA ID 1002199
    Abandoned
  5. Crusher Number 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clark'S Ready-Mix & Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1001815
    Abandoned
  6. Idaho Rock & Sand LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Idaho Aggregate, LLC · MSHA ID 1002119
    Abandoned
  7. Inkom Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ash Grove Cement Co · MSHA ID 1000006
    Abandoned
  8. Inkom Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ash Grove Cement West Inc · MSHA ID 1001428
    Abandoned
  9. Lish Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · KT Sand & Gravel, llc · MSHA ID 1002246
    Abandoned
  10. POCATELLO PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Monroc Inc · MSHA ID 1000801
    Abandoned
  11. Pocatello Wash Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Idaho Materials and Construction · MSHA ID 1000373
    Abandoned
  12. Portable #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bannock Paving Company Inc · MSHA ID 1001728
    Abandoned
  13. Portable #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bannock Paving Company Inc · MSHA ID 1001828
    Abandoned
  14. Portable Crusher Unit B
    Surface metal/non-metal · LeGrand Johnson · MSHA ID 4201963
    Abandoned
  15. PORTABLE PLANT #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bannock Paving Company Inc · MSHA ID 1001729
    Abandoned
  16. Rio Vista Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hunziker Construction Company · MSHA ID 1001837
    Abandoned
  17. Screen Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bannock County Public Works · MSHA ID 1002198
    Abandoned
  18. Screening Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Idaho Transportation Department · MSHA ID 1001708
    Abandoned
  19. Wells Cargo Quartzite
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bannock Paving Company Inc · MSHA ID 1001318
    Abandoned

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

By source vocabularythe publishers' own terms
Feature type Features
Prospect Pit 144
Gravel Pit 39
Borrow Pit 29
Gravel Pit 18
Adit 8
Open Pit Mine 5
Borrow Pit 4
Sand Pit 3
Mine Shaft 2
Open Pit Mine 2
Mine 1
Other counties in IdahoAll counties →
How to read these numbers

A USGS feature is a symbol on a historical topographic map, there when the map was surveyed; it may since have been sealed, reclaimed, built over or reopened as a working mine, and the map does not say which. An OSMRE row is a problem the abandoned mine land program tracks, not a mine. An MSHA mine is a registered operation whose operator reported abandonment, a record that starts in the 1970s. The three overlap and are never added together. The county is assigned from each feature's coordinates against the Census 2023 county boundaries. The full method is on the national page.

Sources
  1. USGS, Consolidated Prospect- and Mine-Related Features from 7.5- and 15-Minute Topographic Quadrangle Maps of the United States (USMIN)
    597,612 point and area features digitized from about 106,350 historical topographic maps published 1886–2006; public domain (CC0). A feature is a map symbol, not a field-verified site, and the map does not say whether it was still worked.
  2. USGS Fact Sheet 2025–3003, The Abandoned Mine Inventory of the United States
    States that as of 2025 there is no comprehensive national inventory of abandoned mine features, and that the detailed national database now being built will not be published.
  3. OSMRE, Abandoned Mine Land Inventory System (e-AMLIS), public Problems layer
    One row per abandoned mine land problem in a problem area, with its type, funding program and reclamation status; mostly coal mined before the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Coordinates are the problem area's.
  4. MSHA, Mines dataset (Mine Data Retrieval System)
    Every mine registered with MSHA since the 1970s; a mine reads Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed when its operator reported that status. Refreshed weekly.
  5. US Census Bureau, 2023 cartographic county boundaries (1:500,000)
    Each feature's county is assigned by its coordinates against these boundaries, not copied from the source file.
  6. GAO-20-238, Abandoned Hardrock Mines (March 2020)
    Federal agencies had identified at least 140,000 abandoned hardrock mine features on federal land and estimated more than 390,000 more not yet captured in their databases.
  7. Abandoned Hardrock Mine Reclamation (AHMR) Program, US Department of the Interior
    The program the USGS inventory is compiled for. Its appropriations and the 674,000 field-confirmed feature count on this page were provided by the program manager, Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, and are cited with permission (2026-09-08).
  8. IMCC-NAAMLP Hardrock AML Report
    Page 48 carries the two figures this page leans on: USGS estimates 633,181 of the 725,690 mine features it recorded from historic topographic maps, 87 percent, are hardrock; and state and federal agencies have submitted more than 724,000 AML features to the national database being built, already more than the historic maps hold. Year-by-year AHMR funding is on page 35.